Obama Lands in Palm Springs: President Barack Obama Lands at Palm Springs International Airport on Feb. 14, 2014. He is greeted by local politicians, including Barbara Boxer (D-Rancho Mirage).

Air Force One casts a shadow as it lands in Fresno, Calif., carrying President Barack Obama to discuss the ongoing drought, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) / AP

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Emphasizing a link between climate change and more intense droughts, President Barack Obama said Friday that California and the West must rethink water use to prepare for more dry spells, and he announced new federal aid to help the state cope with its worst drought in more than a century.

Visiting Los Banos in the drought-stricken Central Valley, Obama toured part of a farm that will be left fallow this year, and he announced more than $160 million in federal financial aid, including $100 million in the farm bill he signed into law last week for programs that cover the loss of livestock.

The president said scientific evidence is clear that rising temperatures influence drought, and that even if the U.S. takes action to curb carbon emissions, the planet will keep getting warmer “for a long time to come” due to the greenhouse gases that have already built up.

“We’re going to have to stop looking at these disasters as something to wait for,” Obama said. “We’ve got to start looking at these disasters as something to prepare for, to anticipate, to start building new infrastructure, to start having new plans, to recalibrate the baseline that we’re working off of.”

After arriving in the Central Valley on Friday afternoon, Obama met with community leaders, including representatives of farms, farm labor and water districts.

“One of the great things about that town hall that I just came out of, not everybody agreed on anything, except people did agree that we can’t keep on doing business as usual,” Obama said. “That’s what people did understand, that there has to be a sense of urgency about this.”

Obama was accompanied by Gov. Jerry Brown, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and other officials.

The president urged Congress to act swiftly on Democratic legislation backed by Boxer and Feinstein that would pour $300 million into emergency aid and drought-relief projects, upgrade city water systems and water conservation, and speed up environmental reviews of water projects, among other steps.

The president also said the budget he will send to Congress next month will include $1 billion for a proposed “climate resilience fund” to invest in research and pay for new technologies to help communities deal with the effects of climate change. The proposal is likely to face stiff resistance from some lawmakers.

In addition to the more than $160 million in federal drought relief assistance, the government is also providing smaller amounts to aid in the most extreme drought areas and to help food banks that serve families affected by water shortages. Obama also called on federal facilities in California to limit water consumption immediately.

“These actions will help, but they’re just the first step,” he said. “We have to be clear. A changing climate means that weather-related disasters like droughts, wildfires, storms, floods, are potentially going to be costlier and they’re going to be harsher.”

Obama said people across the West “are going to have to start rethinking how we approach water for decades to come.”

“The good news is California is always on the cutting edge. Already, you use water far more efficiently than you did decades ago,” Obama said. He noted that farms have become more efficient using drip irrigation, and said: “We know that we can innovate and meet this challenge, but we’ve got to start now.”

The White House has been closely watching the California drought, which follows a year of the lowest rainfall on record. The drought has also brought to a head political fighting over the state’s water resources that feed major cities, the country’s richest agricultural region and waterways that provide habitat for endangered species of fish.

“What we have to do is all come together and figure out how are we all going to make sure that agricultural needs, urban needs, industrial needs, environmental and conservation concerns are all addressed,” Obama said. “That’s going to be a big project, but it’s one that I’m confident we can do.”

Obama visited the Fresno area before traveling to the Coachella Valley on Friday night to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the Rancho Mirage estate Sunnylands.

Obama said at a water facility in Firebaugh that no longer can the U.S. afford to think about water as a competition between the nation’s agricultural and urban areas. With overall water resources expected to diminish significantly in the future, he said, the country must find better ways to cooperate.

“We are going to stay on top of this because it has national implications,” Obama said.

Farmers recently learned they will not receive irrigation water from the State Water Project, a system of rivers, canals and reservoirs. They anticipate a similar announcement later this month from federal authorities who operate a similar system called the Central Valley Project.

Federal officials earlier this month pledged $34 million to help farmers and ranchers conserve scarce water supplies, improve irrigation methods, head off erosion of unplanted fields and create better ways to water livestock.

The Republican-controlled House recently voted to address the drought by rolling back environmental protections and temporarily halting the restoration of a dried-up stretch of the San Joaquin River, work that is designed to restore historic salmon runs. Farmers would prefer to have the water diverted to their crops instead.

Environmentalists and Democrats oppose the bill, and the White House has threatened a veto, arguing that the measure would not alleviate the drought but would undo decades of work to address California’s longstanding water shortages.